One cannot mention HRH Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent (pictured below) without mentioning Captain Edward Molyneux. It was he who was entrusted with the Princess's bridal trousseau, despite protestations from the royal household.

...the designer to whom a fashionable woman would turn if she wanted to be absolutely 'right' without being utterly predictable in the 1920s and 1930s. - Caroline Milbank, Couture: The Great Designers (1985)

Molyneux trained with Lucille, Lady Duff Gordon before serving as an infantry captain in the First World War. After the war, he moved to Paris and opened his first maison de couture in 1919. He quickly established a reputation for refined and modern clothes (mostly in black, navy blue, beige, and grey) that were sure of line.

Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music.

Sunday, 20 March 2011

Friday, 18 March 2011

In quiet, black and white portraits, Peter Hujar captures his subjects in moments of reverie. This one shows Divine, a famously foul-mouthed drag queen, usually seen wearing a blonde wig, sequined dress, and garish make-up. In Hujar’s portrait, the public persona is stripped away. Divine appears as a man, wrinkled and balding, resting on a velvety black blanket and gazing into the distance. His half-closed eyes suggest he is on the borderline between dream and sleep... - Whitney Museum of American Art

Friday, 11 March 2011

The Head of Isabella Blow was donated to the National Portrait Gallery in 2009 by the artists and Blow's estate. The work (which must be spot-lit for the subject's silhouette to be visible) is comprised of taxidermic magpies, rooks, hooded crows, a rattlesnake, a raven, a robin, a carrion crow and a black rat. Other materials also used include fake moss, wood, a lipstick tube and a Manolo Blahnik shoe heel.

Poetry is something in-between the dream and its interpretation. - Lou Andreas-Salomé